FIREBOMB THE WHOLE THING AND BE DONE WITH IT

My husband will freely attest to the fact that it drives me crazy to look around my house and see that THERE ISN'T A SINGLE FLAT SURFACE WITHOUT SOMETHING 
ON IT!

When I woke up that first day of being jobless the plan was to make a list and stick to it. I've made progress but not as much as I would like. One of the major tickets on my agenda is to de-clutter. Now, there's a lot of clutter around here. The bigger the apartment, the more crap one accumulates.  We've got about 2,000 square feet over two floors plus a basement so I was already behind the 8-ball on the whole clutter issue. Not to mention, I have a 9-year old who brings home anything she finds on the street, uses all her money to buy more toys and never wants to get rid of anything (blog on bad parenting to follow). And on top of that, I've just added 4 large moving boxes, 21 framed objets, a box of posters, an archival print and a plant stand that had previously resided in my office.

The plan with the clutter is to get rid of it all, including memorabilia, gold/platinum records, collectible gifts, awards programs, books and all the other stuff I brought home. That's right -- I am cold! I will suffer no emotional attachment to things! They are just things.  I must be clinical in my actions and follow a strict rule of thumb:  If I haven't used it in two years, if my daughter outgrew it or doesn't play with it, if it came from my office and I don't have a place for it at home, if it's broken, if I find something in a shelf or drawer that I didn't even know was there -- it's going!

There are several options for getting rid of stuff with perceived value in my neck of the woods. 1) eBay; 2) stoop sale (Brooklyn equivalent of a yard or garage sale); 3) give it to friends;  4) consignment store; 5) charity and if none of that works then leave it on the street on trash night and it will either be taken within a couple of hours or end up being thrown in the back of the truck by New York's Strongest.

The problem with de-cluttering is that the socially conscious and fiscally responsible methods (i.e. getting a little ROI) of disposing of your stuff are very time-consuming and frankly, annoying.

Trying to be charitable, I carried the two very heavy bags of clothing to the car, sat in 1/2 hour of traffic, parked the car, carried the bags another block to Goodwill and found they weren't open yet. I had to wait 20 minutes past their scheduled opening time for someone to accept my donation and give me a blank receipt for tax purposes. If they'd had a donation bin, I would have forgone the receipt anyway.

I sold two pair of shoes on eBay -- luckily to the same big-footed woman -- and as I was shipping them in a free Priority Mail box, for a flat rate and patting myself on the back for beating the line at the post office, the clerk mentioned that I needed to fill out a customs form so I had to leave the line, fill out the form, decide how I should list the items (gift? merchandise?), put a value on them, decide to insure or not and then return to the evil stares of the people at the front of the line who obviously thought I was queue jumping. Who knew shipping to an APO required a customs form? All that for $40? REALLY.

I used to joke that when my mother died, I'd firebomb her trailer rather than having to sort and get rid of all her stuff. Kind of like "What's Eating Gilbert Grape?" except my mom is really skinny and wants to be buried not burned -- also, my brother is no Johnny Depp.   Now I find I need to sort my own stuff, and my kid's stuff and my husband's stuff and dispose of it properly.

After wheeling my red old lady cart down to the Red Hook post office today to mail a 20.8 pound set of Time-Life books to a guy in Beaufort, SC for the measly amount of $20, I'm re-thinking the whole concept of "responsible disposition" of my stuff. Trash night is tonight but... I'm going out for drinks with a friend and don't want to get all sweaty dragging junk to the curb before we hit the bar.

Looks like there's going to be a good stoop sale on Henry Street next weekend. Just sayin'